Tips and Tutorials Tuesday #18

My quick tip for today is to clean your rotary cutter! Lint accumulates quickly, and a lot of accumulated lint can decrease the life of your blade. I like to use a piece of scrap batting to wipe down my rotary cutter when I change out my blade. Now I just need to remember to pause to clean the cutter more frequently than when I change out the blade!

This is something I need to remember to do more often. I’ll be using my rotary cutter & thinking this is just not cutting well at all! I forget how long I’ve actually been using it! Good to know they can be recycled!

I had no idea that blades could be sent in and resharpened! The company is from my state, so you’d think I’d have heard about this. I am definitely going to give this a try, as well as share this with my quilt group. Thanks, Yvonne! I have an old mint tin that I put all of my blades, needles, pins into. Once it’s full, I tape it shut and toss it in the trash.

One of the problems with changing the blades for me is either removing and picking up the old blade or separating the new blade from a package of five. I have used a straight pin to separate them but I recently bought these little purple magnetic hooks that makes handling these blades a whole lot easier and less scarier.

This is a great tip! I trim all of my client’s quilts after I quilt them, and the batting really causes lint to build up fast. I thought the locking mechanism on my cutter was broken until I changed the blade last week. I discovered that it was just clogged with lint. I will definitely be cleaning it between blade changes in the future.

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About Yvonne

Yvonne @Quilting Jetgirl Quilter | Designer | Tech Editor | Blogger

I seek to change active, generous, caring creatives who want to learn to quilt or improve their quilting skills into people who approach quilting with joy. Into people who recognize that quilting creates connections and builds community. I seek to help you become excited about every step of the quilting process. To make quilts that you are proud of. Thanks for joining me. I can’t wait to see the quilts you are going to create.

In her earlier career, Yvonne worked as an aerospace engineer until April 2014 when she radically redesigned her life to focus on her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Her company name, Quilting Jetgirl, is a blend of her professional histories and the tagline “Sewing at the Speed of Sound” is a nod to her work on the second privately funded (non-government) vehicle to break the sound barrier. She has been quilting for 20+ years and credits quilting with helping her feel balanced and connected to both her local hometown community and a larger global community.